Later this month comes the premiere of the series “Blade Runner 2099” on Amazon Prime Video with actresses Michelle Yeoh and Hunter Schafer leading the cast.
As it’s set fifty years after the events of Denis Villeneuve’s “Blade Runner 2049,” it isn’t expected to have that much of a connection to the events of that movie. Indeed, the trailers have indicated that the film’s universe has undergone some big changes.
In the new issue of SFX Magazine (via GamesRadar), showrunner Silka Luisa confirms that the events of Villeneuve’s film won’t be ‘directly connected’ to the new series.
Part of that is to make the series accessible to those new to the franchise, and thus makes the series much more of a standalone work:
“No, [‘Blade Runner 2049’] is not directly connected to the show. What was an important early mandate was that audiences could come to the show not having seen the films, and this could stand alone…This could be an introduction to the world of Blade Runner, and it wouldn’t be dependent on you having watched ‘2049,’ [or] you having watched the first ‘Blade Runner.’ In that sense, we had to divorce ourselves from the narrative.”
In the new series Los Angeles has been reborn, just not by humanity. Cora, a fugitive in a final bid to stop running, takes on one last identity: a Blade Runner. Forced to partner with Olwen, a Replicant days from dying, she hunts down a runaway hiding a truth that could collapse their fragile city.
The series is set to debut on November 25th.
